The code sprint/hackathon is open to any idea, really. We emphasize projects that address community needs and use open data.

If you have an idea - great. Work on that. If you're looking for something, we have curated some ideas that will have impact on our community.

NC Re-Entry Project: A Code for NC Project

The purpose of the NC Reentry Resources Hub project is to provide high-quality information resources relevant and valuable to NC citizens reentering society after a period of incarceration or dealing with collateral consequences of a previous criminal conviction.

In this talk, we will share the journey from the project’s origin as a Code for Asheville project targeting Buncombe County to a distributed collaboration between Code for Greensboro and Code for Asheville (so far) to bring this resource to all 100 North Carolina counties, including our approach to ensuring the sustainability of the project.

This project is well underway, but looking for volunteers to bring it to their local area.

The team is distributed across North Carolina, so you can help regardless of where you live. Check out a recent sprint day held simultaneously in Asheville and Greensboro.

Parks and Rec:Park Finder App

An app to find all the parks and greenways across the Triangle, including programs and amenities in all municipalities. What can you think would make a great park app?10050

Not Just a Flu-shot Finder

an app to where you can search for where to get flu shots and expanding the capabilities to include other health-related needs such as finding narcan and prescription drop-off locations. And interact with the public on emergent health care issues.

Business Development Diversity Accelerator

This idea is in a seminal stage and we are seeking a champion(s) who is looking at ways to help minority and under-represented people turn their business ideas into actual businesses by providing resources to streamline the business-creation process.

Food Opportunity Challenge

The goal for this challenge would be to develop a mechanism for providing an aggregated view of all of the various food providers in a particular area. Farmers markets, groceries, food banks, food pantries and other resources that are available for people with limited means along with a way to help people understand what is available not just nearby but at a specific time and if there are any restrictions for access. Ideally, it would be useful for people to have mechanisms to receive updates or SMS texts from those partners that they frequent. A previous 50project, NC Stone Soup, was put forward as a starting point 3 years ago with positive feedback from Wake County staff in this area of work but it didn't go beyond the prototype stage.

Use data.world to link to datasets

New this year, we’ve had an opportunity to work with data.world, a start-up company dedicated to sharing data from around the globe. We’ve set up an organization on that platform to allow for participants to have better access to the data, tools to leverage that data, and to the data committee team for any questions that you might have. The data that we’ve curated comes from open data sites around NC and even more are available through the data.world platform.

Data.world – check out the platform at data.world and create an account for free.

Code for NC – check out our organization and interact with us on data.world. From there you can see the existing challenges as well as the data that has been curated. You can also use their social messaging to reach out to our data committee with questions about existing data sets or about data sets you’d like to see. We will help find data and connect it to data.world whenever possible

If any of this is in your power zone or of interest to you, then your brain should be screaming: Challenge accepted! We’ll see you at the open data competition kickoff at CityCamp NC.

What makes a good demo pitch?

The hackathon at City Camp NC draws participants with a diversity of experiences. We’ve found over the years that some individuals have pitched many times times and others are pitching for the first time. Here are the elements that we’ve found that make a good demo pitch:

Problem/ChallengeA concise statement of the problem you're trying to solve

Target customers/clientsWho are your potential customers?

The marketHow big is the market for your product? How many people could benefit from your solution?

Your solutionHow are you going to solve the challenge?

Open data useWhat open data sources are you utilizing? How are you using open data?

Business modelWhat is your revenue source? Who will pay for your service or product? How much will you charge? How will you scale?

CompetitorsAre others serving the same market?

Unique value propositionWhat makes your approach unique?

Team needsWhat expertise do you need? How do you plan to recruit new members?